Many testators authorized their executors to make due provision of trentalls and masses ‘for the wealth of their souls,’ without specifying where they were to be celebrated: the friars no doubt came in for a share of these. Thus Thomas Hoye, Vicar of Bampton, in 1531 gives the following instructions[736]:
‘It is my will that the forsaid goodes be preysid and put to vendicion and the money therof cummyng to be ordered and distributed by myn executors for trentallys of masses off Requiem eternam and masses of the V woundes of our lord to be celebrate and said for the welthe of my soule and all Christen sowles. Amen.’
On the other hand, the parish priests or rectors of churches were legally entitled to one-fourth of the gifts, bequests, and fees given by their parishioners to the friars[737]: but it is impossible to say whether the right was generally enforced. In 1521 Leo X,
‘owing to the importunate exaction of the funeral fourth by some rectors of churches,’
exempted the friars from the payment[738].
Among other sources of revenue may be enumerated the institution of annual masses for fees (of which the wills often make mention), commutations of penances for money[739], payment by the University and others for the use of their church, schools, and other buildings on various occasions[740], and collections in church[741]. At the beginning of the sixteenth century we hear of a
‘gild of St. Mary in the church of the Friars Minors[742],’
which no doubt supported one or more friars to say mass in one of the ten chapels. Of manual labour there is little evidence; the only kind mentioned is the transcription of manuscripts of which we have already spoken.
We may here say a few words on two other points. Firstly, from what classes of society were the Franciscans mainly drawn? In the thirteenth century a very large number of men of position, of high birth, were attracted to the Order; but that this was unusual may be gathered from the rejoicings which took place over converts who were ‘valentes in saeculo[743].’ There is every reason to suppose that the Grey Friars, as well as the other students at the University, were mainly recruited from the sons of tradesmen, artisans, and villeins[744]. Friar Brackley, D.D. was the son of a Norwich dyer[745]; and the towns probably supplied the greater proportion of the Oxford Franciscans[746]. Secondly, what led men to take the vows of the Minorites? Excluding again the thirteenth century (when the highest motives were predominant), and confining ourselves to the later times, we must admit that, apart from those who entered the Order as boys, either from choice or at the instigation or compulsion of relatives[747]—the leading motive was a superstitious belief in the externals of religion, in the efficacy of ‘the washing of cups and pots.’ How strong this feeling was may be seen from the fact that Latimer was at one time in danger of yielding to it.
‘I have thought,’ he wrote to Sir Edward Baynton, ‘that if I had been a friar in a cowl, I could not have been damned, nor afraid of death; and in my sickness I have been tempted to become a friar[748].’